More than just a Grain Goddess
(Note: From a personal perspective Demeter/Ceres is a melding of both Greek and Roman views of the goddess.)
On the surface, when one starts looking into a deity such as Demeter/Ceres, the one thing that stands out the most is ‘Grain Goddess’. And while that is one of her critical roles, there is also much more than that to her.
Theoi.com calls her “the Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain and bread who sustained mankind with the earth’s rich bounty.” This description is of course true. She presides most commonly over the wheat/barley harvest that sustains the community. (And though most of us in modern society don’t see the grain production industry any more, because we buy our bread and malt from supermarkets, it is still a key part of sustaining our economy and community.)
She brings the fertility of the earth as well as fertility of mankind. She herself has a daughter, Persephone, and she is often depicted with a small child in her lap, and is called by the epithet Megala Mater (Great Mother.) She is a key deity to petition for the wealth and health of the earth’s bounty that sustains us, as well as the blessings of children and the expansion of the community as a a whole.
Demeter/Ceres gifted mankind with the knowledge of agriculture, which enabled us to switch focus from the hunter/gatherer model, and into a position where communities could settle in one place and expand. This also meant that these stable communities had to create new laws and rules about what was and wasn’t acceptable. The creation of ‘civilised behaviour’ to some degree. We can see an example of this in her Greek epithets Thesmophoros (Law-Bringer) and Thesmia (Of the Laws).
She is also liminal goddess, though many would probably not place her in the same category as more popular liminal gods, such as Hermes and Hekate.
The term “liminality is derived from the Latin limen, “threshold”, and concerns crossing a threshold or boundary from one state of being to another, e.g., and individual changing from being single to being married, or a society changing from a state of peace to one of war. Such changes disturb social equilibrium, creating a crisis that affects both individuals and the society as a whole.
In the Roman Empire, Demeter/Ceres was petitioned after a successful war campaign in order to transition society from a state of war into a state of peace. A ‘returning to normality’. In a Greek context, as most warriors were also farmers, this would transition them back from soldier to farmer again.
In the ancient world, those that went through the transition of youth to mother also had close connections to Demeter/Ceres. Along with marriage and the concept of divorce (in Rome). The Thesmophoria was held as a woman only festival, which re-enacted parts of the Hymn to Demeter and ensured the fertility of the land and the women themselves.
The biggest liminal connection in relation to Demeter/Ceres is life and death. The Eleusinian Mysteries were a (very) successful Mystery Cult that promised its initiates a more blessed afterlife than the grey fields of Asphodel in the Underworld. In Rome during the Regal period, she was connected to the opening of the mundus Cereris, a pit or door, that allowed the spirits of the dead to roam the world, breaking down the boundaries between the living and dead.
Her epithet Khthonia (Of the Earth), links her to the both the earth and the dead, the barriers between which, can be blurred at best.
(There is a more complex way of looking at this when you include Demeter/Ceres, Persephone and Haides as a complete triad of fertility and death deities, but that’s for another post.)
